THE TRUE TEACHER 



AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY 

EDGAR DUBS SHIMER, Ph.D.,LL.D. 

AT A DINNER GIVEN BY 

OI 2XOAA2TIKO 

TO 

HON. THOMAS W. CHURCHILL 

PRESIDENT, BOARD OF EDUCATION 
CITY OF NEW YORK 

APRIL 12, 1913 



Privately Printed 



COPTBIGHT, 1913, BY 

Edgar Dubs Shimer 



©CI.A346901 



V 






THE TRUE TEACHER 

Not long ago I was called upon to sign an 
official document and also to attach to the 
signature my professional title. I signed 
my name and then, on the line below, I 
added the word *' Teacher." My wife was 
looking over my shoulder at the time, and 
she asked rather quizzically, "Why did 
you write 'Teacher'.^ Why didn't you say 
'Superintendent'?" My reply to this was, 
"Because, to my mind, * Teacher' is the 
proudest title that any man can wear — if 
he deserves it." 

Allow me, therefore, to speak to you from 
the teacher's point of view, and to set forth 
as fully as the brief time limit permits, and 
as simply as I can, what appear to me to be 
the essential functions in the process of 
teaching. This will, of course, compel me 
to speak largely in the abstract. As a 
counterbalance, I shall think in the concrete 
and keep in view one teacher in particular. 
This will hold me steady as I focus atten- 
tion on separate characteristic qualities. 

[1] 



The name of this society, Ol 2;)^oXacrTiA:ot 
always reminds me of a great teacher, Doc- 
tor Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg, and of 
his regular correspondence in Greek with the 
famous Felton of Harvard. He gave me 
this life motto when he found that I had 
determined to become a teacher, — 

" MaKcipLOL ol 'irT(0')(o\ tw irvevixaTt^ otl avrcov iarlv 
7) /3a<n\€ia rcov ovpavoov." 

Take that home with you, Ol S^oXao-rt^ot 
and translate it into your daily lives. You 
will find it sound practical philosophy. It 
is especially serviceable for the teacher who 
lives it. No teacher who suffers from pride 
of intellect, or who wraps himself up in robes 
of infallibility, ever enters into the kingdom 
of true teaching. ''Blessed are the poor in 
spirit " holds true in every sphere of human 
activity. 

Granting, however, the correct spiritual 
attitude of the teacher, what in the last 
analysis does teaching mean.^ What are the 
ends aimed at.^ Surely this question must be 
definitely settled before we can properly con- 
sider the various means to be used. In my 
judgment, formation rather than informa- 
tion is the end to be constantly held in view. 
If this be taken as the controlling principle 
of method and the paramount standard of 
practice, all else will naturally organize itself 
in due season. The outcome of it all will be 

[2] 



character, a sum total of habits and dispo- 
sitions, — in short, power. 

To teach means to train the sense-impres- 
sions of a child in such fashion that they will 
all receive adequate exercise, gradually and 
naturally become full-fledged sense-percep- 
tions, and finally pass over into regulated 
observation. Then to look will mean to see, 
and to hark will mean to hear. 

I am reminded of a college professor who 
complained privately that his juniors in 
geology could not perceive. One day after 
the study of a certain rock-formation, he 
took the class on an excursion, during which 
he led them to an outcropping of the strata 
under study plainly in view; but they did 
not tell him what it was. One of the stu- 
dents, indeed, barked his shin as he crossed 
the ledge. Of course, he had looked at the 
rock. Had he seen.^ Had he perceived .^^ 
Had he observed .^^ The professor thought 
not. 

I am fond of telling the following story of 
my friend. Doctor Edgar Fahs Smith, Pro- 
vost of the University of Pennsylvania, a 
famous chemist with a world-wide reputa- 
tion richly deserved. Doctor Smith is a re- 
markably successful teacher. One day he 
stopped short in a lesson and said, ** Young 
gentlemen, allow me to say that you fail to 
perceive. You look and perhaps you see; 
but you do not truly perceive, because you 

[3] 



do not regulate your perceptions; that is, 
you do not yet observe." 

Thereupon, he took from his cabinet a 
large beaker and set it on the table in front 
of the students. Into this beaker he poured 
from various bottles a mixture of chemicals, 
— the vilest concoction to the taste that he 
could compound, but one that would not 
stain. 

**Now, gentlemen, watch me very close- 
ly," said he, ''and then do exactly as you 
see me do." 

At this, the Doctor slowly and ostenta- 
tiously thrust his forefinger deep down into 
the mixture, withdrew it just as slowly, 
shook off the last suspended drop, and then 
rapidly put his middle finger into his 
mouth for a moment. 

The students in company followed the 
Doctor's example, as they fondly thought. 
When they had got through with spitting 
and sputtering and the making of wry 
faces, the Doctor quietly remarked, "It is 
just as I told you, gentlemen. You do not 
yet truly perceive. If you had observed 
what I did (and here he began to repeat the 
performance) you would have noticed that 
the finger which I put into my mouth was 
not the one which I put into the beaker." 

Sense-training, you see, means far more 
than the mere training of sense, the mere 
response to stimulus. Good sense-training 

[4] 



lends itself indeed to common-sense, a rare 
quality, yet one easily understood to be 
the power to refrain from acting on mere 
hearsay, to wait until all the evidence is in 
along every line of perception, and not to 
shoot off at half-cock upon the report of a 
single sense. The world is full enough of 
single-sensers. 

To teach means primarily to develop 
sense-reactions and to exalt them into con- 
ceptions. To that end it means to give 
power to fixate the attention, and to hold 
it fixed as steadily as nature will allow; that 
is, to adjust it and readjust it easily in 
true concentration. Without such natural 
flitting to and fro, we have only the fixed 
attention of a monkey, an idiot, or a mono- 
maniac, — the fixed idea of a hypnote. 

To teach means to train the memory so 
that it may become highly retentive, swift- 
ly reproductive, and faithfully recognitive. 
'' Tenaciter, faciliter, fideliter'' is the Latin 
motto for a good memory. The great mys- 
tery here is not retention, nor reproduction 
whether direct or indirect, but the inexpli- 
cable elemental power of recognition. How 
do we come to know that the memory trace 
revivified is like the sense-impression now 
appealing to us for the first time.'^ The two 
have never before been together in our 
experience. Man may well stand in awe 
before such an inherency! 

[5] 



To teach means to give wings to the im- 
agination and to train it how to fly. It is 
natural and right for a child to revel in a 
world of intensely vivid images, both con- 
gruous and incongruous. Profound insight 
and loving sympathy are needed to keep 
young Icarus from flying too near the sun. 
To teach means to regulate the flight, so 
that from the realm of fancy the child may 
pass out of the fairy, myth, and legendary 
age into constructive imagination with ac- 
cess of power gained by exercise, and not 
with loss of power because his wings were 
clipped to make him stay within the bounds 
of a too narrow curriculum. 

To teach means to make the mind acute 
in detecting differences ; and at the same 
time to make it keen in tracing likenesses, 
so that it shall not be lost in the multi- 
plicity of particulars, but be able to rise 
above them to a general truth. The child 
learns to take apart and to put together. 
He learns to see the parts in the whole and 
the whole in its parts at the same time. 
This exercise in discrimination and assim- 
ilation constitutes comparison. The man 
who can discover true relations in making 
broad comparisons is the man whose judg- 
ments are sound and safe for continuity of 
thought in reasoning. No matter how ir- 
refragable the logic may be, a conclusion is 
never stronger than the major premise. 

[6] 



To teach means more than merely to 
equip the intellect. It means to rouse the 
feelings and to refine them, to convert selfish 
emotions into social sensibilities, to make 
the child feel truly that beside him as a 
single self there sits a larger self, that he 
has his rights but that his classmates have 
theirs too, and finally that his conduct is 
not correct unless it can be made universal. 
In this realm the teacher's example is su- 
preme. I have wondered whether Emer- 
son was thinking of his teacher when he said, 
"How can I hear what you say, when what 
you are is thundering in my ears.^" 

To teach means to give intellectual illu- 
mination to the impulses, all of which are 
blind in themselves, and to convert these 
emotional outbreaks into desires worthy to 
become the core of motive. Every human 
being makes his own motive. He desires, 
deliberates, and chooses among the ends 
which he himself entertains. There is no 
such thing as external motive. A man's 
motives are his own created ideals. He 
cannot evade the responsibility of free 
choice in selecting the one to act upon. 

To teach means most important 1^^ there- 
fore, how to convert non-voluntary or at- 
tracted attention into voluntary attention, 
to bring about a full, voluntary self-control 
and thereby to establish selfhood. 

With such a conception of teaching, it is 

[7] 



not too bold, I take it, to say that all along 
the line the pupil will in the very nature of 
things build ideals. Here he will take an 
idea, there an idea, and elsewhere perhaps 
but part of an idea. These he will fuse in 
his imagination into an ideal. Goethe's 
dictum that the imagination is the prepara- 
tory school for thought comes true. He will 
glimpse and reach after the highest ideal of 
the intellect, namely, — truth. Amid all the 
diversities of his manifold emotional experi- 
ences, he will stretch his soul with longing 
toward the highest ideal of the emotions, 
namely, — beauty, or harmony amid diver- 
sity. From his daily battle to keep an im- 
pulse at heel, and his joy over conquest of 
sin (perhaps in imitation of some hero, or 
for love of his mother), he reaches after the 
highest ideal of morals, of the will, namely, — 
goodness. 

But the superstructure of his character 
rises still higher. He now has new footing. 
He makes the supreme effort of the human 
mind. He idealizes his ideals, and apotheo- 
sizes truth, beauty, and goodness into the 
grander, all-comprehending ideal — God. No 
true teaching, from my point of view, can 
be done except it be with the conscious- 
ness on the part of the teacher of the rela- 
tion that exists between him and the Great 
Supreme Being whom he worships , — that con- 
sciousness to be expressed in daily conduct. 

[8] 



A teacher's power in the last resort de- 
pends upon what he is. Therefore he should 
in largest measure possess the qualities he 
seeks to develop. He should assuredly be a 
student, with a wide range, yet able to say, 
in all modesty, — 

"I am a part of all that I have met; 
Yet all experience is an arch where-thro' 
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin 

fades 
Forever and forever when I move. 

* * * yearning in desire 

To follow knowledge, like a sinking star. 
Beyond the utmost bounds of human 
thought." 

The teacher must first himself know 
how the soul gropes out of darkness into 
light before he can guide another. Such 
a teacher I have had in mind to-night. I 
have repeatedly gauged his powers as he 
taught with fine tact, winning personality 
and sure success. He was a constant, care- 
ful, and reflective student. He made a full 
surrender of all his powers to the divine 
glory of teaching. The memory of his re- 
markable persistence brings to mind the 
words of Faustus, — 

"Nature that framed us of four elements 
Warring within our breasts for regiment 
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds; 

[9] 



Our souls whose faculties can comprehend 
The wondrous architecture of the world, 
And measure every wandering planet's course, 
Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
And always moving as the restless spheres, 
Will us to wear ourselves and never rest." 

The soul of the true teacher is ever climb- 
ing after knowledge infinite. He wills to 
wear himself and never rest. 

Gentlemen, I have been speaking of 
Thomas W. Churchill. For many years 
he and I were teachers of Oratory and 
English Literature in Evening High School. 
Similar tastes and aspirations, common joys 
and tribulations, brought us into close fel- 
lowship, heart answering heart and friend- 
ship ripening with affection. I know this 
man well. You could have given me no 
finer subject for discourse. Most of you 
know him as the President of the Board of 
Education of the City of New York. I, 
too, know him as President and as teacher to 
teacher; but I also know him as man to man. 

I have for some time been deeply inter- 
ested in literature for children. Let me tell 
you a story. 

One night when all the engines in the 
Sunnyside freight yard had gone to bed, 
the superintendent found that three heavy 
freight cars had been left where they did 
not belong. He wanted to have them taken 

[10] 



over a little rise to the other side of the 
yard, so he went to the round-house to ask 
one of the engines to help him. As the haul 
was heavy, of course he went to the biggest 
engine first and said, "No. 26, won't you 
help me get some freight cars over the hill? '' 
''No, I won't," said No. 26. "I am too 
tired. Let me alone." 

Then he went to the next biggest engine 
and said, "No. 54, won't you help me get 
some freight cars over the hill.^" 

"No, I won't," said No. 54. "I am too 
sleepy. Let me alone." 

The next engine said, "Let No. 20 do it." 
Every one of the big engines had some 
excuse and wouldn't help. As the disap- 
pointed superintendent was just about to 
leave the round-house he saw a pony-engine 
standing near the door. He had never 
thought to ask this pony-engine for help, 
but now he asked, half doubtfully, "Do 
you think, pony-engine, that you could help 
me get some freight cars over the hill.^" 
"I think I can," replied the pony-engine. 
"Come along then," said the superin- 
tendent. 

Soon the pony-engine had hitched himself 
to the cars and began to puff as he strained 
at the heavy load. Slowly and painfully he 
dragged the cars up the rise. You could 
hear him say in thin tones, with long drawn- 
out but determined utterance, "/ — think — / 

[11] 



— can, / — think — / — can.'^ But just as 

soon as he got over the rise he fairly 
chortled, "7 thought I could! I thought I 
could! I thought I could!" 

It means great things to have a proper 
faith in yourself, whoever and whatever you 
may be. ''That which we are, we are," says 
Tennyson. Not until a man has faith 
enough in himself to be the man that he is 
can he look the world squarely in the face 
and say, '* I am. What I am, that I am." 

When a man can truly say, ''I am," and 
not till then, he can take the next step 
and just as firmly say, "I can." The old 
Roman was right when he said ''Sum ergo 
possum." 

If a man can say, "I am, therefore I 
can," he has a consciousness that easily 
passes over into conscience. He becomes 
conscientious. For him opportunity means 
duty. As soon as duty dawns he says, ''I 
ought." 

Now comes the last step in the series. 
Let a man first be able to say truly, "I am," 
and believe in it with all his might. Then 
he can safely say, "I can," for he will have 
a just knowledge of the limitations of his 
power. Now let him consider the moral 
judgments involved in conscience and he 
will progress to "I ought." 

Only by advancing through these three 
vestibules of spiritual activity, "I am, I 

[12] 



can, I ought," is it possible for any man to 
enter into the temple of the categorical im- 
perative, and be able to say, of himself and 
for himself, "I will." Every mortal who 
wishes to possess himself must be able to 
say, "I am, I can, I ought, and I will." 

That is the man, Thomas W. Churchill. 
Of him it will remain true at all times, 
though he may be made weak by time and 
fate, that he is strong to will, to strive, to 
seek, to find, and not to yield. 

Gentlemen, let us rise and greet our guest 
of honor, Thomas W. Churchill. 



fSkS 5^ 



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